We Found the Most Beautiful Lake in Washington - Van Life North Cascades National Park

We're so excited to be back in the van and back on the road. We're doing what we have always talked about and that is exploring our own backyard here in Washington. And right now we've just arrived to the little town of Winthrop and over the next few days we're going to be exploring North Cascades National Park. Super excited to be back on the road in our van. We're starting off at Three Finger Jack Saloon. It's actually the oldest legal saloon in Washington state. It's pretty cool too as we're walking through town. It has an old west theme. It actually feels like we're on a movie set which is awesome. That's actually done on purpose. This town was redesigned in the 1970s right when they opened the North Cascades Highway which we're about to explore. Can't wait. Cheers you guys. All right time to go find our campsite and also I've been driving this thing. How crazy is that? I drove it two hours today you guys. She's doing good. Thank you. We are traveling up the mountain now. You can feel the cool breeze just surrounded by evergreens. It is so beautiful. Can't wait. Get to our campground. Just relax. Are you ready? I'm so ready. It's so pretty up here. I love it so much. I can't believe this is only like four hours away from home. We're at our campground. So we're actually staying at Klipchuck Campground. It's first come first serve. We actually worried about it because we weren't sure if we're going to get a campground spot because we're coming in the middle of the day. But it's the middle of the week and we got lucky and we have a beautiful spot. There's so many spots open too. We were so surprised. We had like some dispersed camping on the like as backups but we don't need the backups. So time to set up camp and make some drinks. Drinks to celebrate. Yeah let's do it baby. Yeah. She's hurting me. Because you said yeah like we're like on a sports team. I like pounded the air out of myself. Did I say it was $20 a night? I blacked out. It's our first day back filming again. Okay so we both couldn't pick a drink we both wanted. So Sammy's making margaritas and I'm making a gin martini. So a couple things I didn't think about. No toothpick for my olives and our freezer's too small to actually like chill the glass. So if you're making these at home definitely chill the glass. That makes it that much better. I also like to let the mixture sit for like 10 minutes just to get super cold. I didn't know you were having two cups. I don't know. I made a margarita off the top of my head and it's just like tequila so that is going to call for two cups. Also we only have one glass and so I'm using paper cups which you know and the tajin doesn't really stick to the rim that well. It's camping drinks not as fancy as normal. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers. Excited to be here. Oh it's so good. I forgot jalapenos for a jalapeno margarita but the tajin is so good. Try mine out. It's a little stiff remember. What's stiff mean? Strong. You don't like it? No. We also hear a creek right over there. There's a little walking path so I think after we enjoy these we go down and see if there's like a spot to swim at. All right Tommy is dying to walk down to the creek. The water flowing looks like it's flowing pretty fast. All right let's go check it out. All right I say we change come back and swim. Great idea. Tommy found a really nice little spot down there. I think I need a margarita every time I go on a hike. Just casually sipping and walking. A walk maybe. A hike's pushing it. I don't know. I'm enjoying myself. We lost a little bit of going to change but that's okay. Now we're just extra ready to get in the water. Okay it's colder now. It's cold. It's cold. It's slippery. Okay it's actually very cold. Holy cow. Wow. I can feel something for it. Oh you get numb so fast. It feels so good now though. So this morning we're doing the Blue Lake Trail. It's a four and a half mile out and back hike. We got here super early just to find a parking spot. It does fill up pretty quickly. It's a small parking lot. We got up about 5 30 but we're almost to the top now. What a beautiful hike it is. You can see those mountains in the background. Started off going through like a lot of forest. There are some streams and now we're almost to the top. What a great way to start our day here. What do you think? Absolutely gorgeous. It's still pretty early so the sun hasn't hit it yet. Oh it does look super blue from up here. Yeah. Wow. It's time for a cold plunge. I'm already cold so what does that make it? Cold cold plunge? It's a little early. It's a little early. You ready? I don't know. How's it feel? That's great. Wow that is glorious. Only part that sucks is getting in and out with the rocks but the water was freezing but super refreshing. All right we did bring up some food. Oranges and I made some like turkey cheese lettuce wraps. Hey get off my bag dude. So on the hike up here I was like oh Sammy I forgot our telephoto lens because you can see mountain goats up here but we didn't need it. We just saw it within like three feet. I know we were just sitting down here and I heard like boop boop boop. I was like oh somebody's coming. Turn around. Nope it's a goat. How cool though. Very cool. You trying to warm up? It took some convincing for Sammy to get in a second time. Yeah but it was actually it felt less cold the second time. Yeah we're still numb. I just hiked up here on the east side on top. You get amazing views of the lake and the mountain. We're heading back down now. All the wildfires are so pretty but come as early as possible especially in the summer here because of the smoke and all the wildfires. On the way up here there was no smoke. All these mountains were super clear but now all the smog is coming and it smells a little smoky as well. Wow that was absolutely epic. Definitely a 10 out of 10 hike. The blue lake gorgeous. It was. We're hot again now though. Time to go back to our campground. Thank goodness we have that creek because I'm ready to get in some cold water. Tonight for dinner we are doing smothered pork chops with rice and gravy. I don't know it's like Tommy and I's go-to affordable easy meal. You don't really need that many ingredients and it comes together pretty quickly. First thing we need to do is make a pot of rice because that takes 20 minutes. Okay rice is on. Usually I like to toast the rice first and like put a little bit of garlic in there just for a little bit of extra flavor. For the pork chops I'm just gonna pat them dry and then really season them. I do like slap your mama onion powder, garlic powder, pepper and that's pretty much it. So now I'm just gonna chop up some garlic and we like lots of garlic and some onions. It's a really simple dinner actually. Cherry lime's the best flavor. Okay rice is done. That's delicious. Okay I'm just gonna brown up the pork chops, get the pan really hot and then I also put some corn in here but I'm not gonna turn it on until the pork chops are done. I'm gonna put some um slap your mama in the corn. Tommy loves it when I say slap your mama. That's what it's called. Okay that's a lot of sodium. What was that? Don't show that part. I'm gonna put butter in it too. You can take the girl out of the south but you can't take the south out of the girl. Okay so once all of the pork chops are nice and brown I'm gonna take them out and then we're just gonna saute up our onions and garlic and you can add a little bit more butter or oil. Brown those up a little bit and then we'll add the garlic because I don't want it to burn. Okay now I'm just gonna add in the garlic and once it sautes up you just add the pork chops back in and then cover it with beef broth, chicken broth or something but I have neither one of those so I'm just gonna add water. Usually I do like broth and like flour but this is like brown gravy mix so I'm just gonna add a little bit of this with water and see where we're at. Just using what we have kind of thing. Oh you know what else would be really good? Like a little splash of Worcestershire sauce. We don't have that either. That would be good. Thicken. Boil. I'm gonna go ahead and add in the pork chops because they do need to actually finish cooking a little bit more on the inside. So add them in. Put the onions on top. Honestly it's not that serious. Just put it all in the pan. I'm gonna put a lid on this and just kind of let it do its thing for a little bit. The sauce never thickened up and so I feel a little bit self-conscious that it's looking a little not the best. Oh you're full of it. Smells and looks. Continue to make love. Then we'll be.